Name: Norman Anthony Aguero Currently a student at FIU. My major is chemistry and my minor is physics. My goal is to hopefully earn a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry.
Strange Tales from the London Underground
by Nick Redfern
FATE Magazine :: July/August 2008
England’s famous London Underground railway system serves Greater London and parts of the counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, and Buckinghamshire. It’s also the world’s oldest underground network of its type: services began on January 10, 1863, on the Metropolitan Railway. Today, the London Underground has no fewer than 268 stations and approximately 250 miles of track, making it the longest sub-surface railway in the world. In 2007, over one billion passengers were recorded as having used the Underground since its creation.
According to some, however, the London Underground is home to much more than just tracks, trains and commuters. Deep within the maze of dark old tunnels, distinctly strange and diabolical things are said to lurk…
Tales of ghosts and monsters roaming the sinister depths of the London Underground have circulated for years. Some of these legends were incorporated into a 1972 film titled Death Line, starring horror-movie stalwarts Christopher Lee and Donald Pleasance. The movie tells the story of a cave-in at a station being built at Russell Square in the 1890s. When the accident occurs, several Irish laborers (both men and women) are presumed killed. The construction company subsequently goes bankrupt and cannot afford to dig out the bodies. As might be expected, the laborers don’t actually die, but instead they survive and reproduce. Eighty years later, their devolved offspring live deep within the underground tunnels, replenishing their food supply from the platform at Russell Square.
Michael Goss has studied legends of such devolved humans roaming the tunnels of London, and is skeptical that they have any basis in fact: “These troglodytes exist in that nebulous quasi-material form that is part-rumor, part-legend…the subterraneans seem a deceptively playful kind of London legend, the sort which narrators repeat with disparaging amusement, but which cries out to be believed… They probably eat the sandwiches and burgers we discard and it is ‘widely believed’ that they also eat tramps, drunks and other isolated late-night commuters. Now you have another good reason for avoiding the Northern Line after rush hour.”
But not everyone is quite so certain that the reports are the stuff of myth. Jon Downes is the director of the British-based Center for Fortean Zoology, dedicated to the investigation of mysterious animals such as Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, and the Loch Ness Monster. Between 1982 and 1985, Downes worked as a nurse at the Royal Counties Hospital, near the English city of Exeter. While employed there, Downes heard stories of how at some point in the 1940s, disturbing things occurred that had a direct link with the tales of strange goings-on beneath the London Underground.
According to a doctor Downes spoke with, the events began with a series of late-night phone calls to the hospital from the Lord Lieutenant of the County, from the then-Earl of Devon, and from elements of the Devonshire Police Force, all secretly informing senior personnel at the hospital that a highly dangerous patient was to be brought to the hospital within the hour, and would require specialist care in an isolated, locked room.
Around 45 minutes later, a police vehicle arrived at the hospital, reversing with a screech up to a side door. Several police officers tumbled out of the back door of the vehicle while trying to hang onto what the doctor said resembled a dirt-encrusted and hair-covered caveman.
The creature was reportedly around six feet in height and completely naked. It had a heavy brow, wide nose, and very muscular arms and legs. For three days, the man-beast was securely held at the hospital, Downes was advised, before it was transferred to an unspecified location far below the London Underground. Its fate remains unknown.
In some respects, this story eerily parallels that of a man named Colin Campbell, who maintains that while traveling home on the Underground in the mid-1960s, he had a nightmarish encounter with a very similar beast.
It was late at night and Campbell was the only person to get off the train at its scheduled stop on the Northern Line. As the train pulled away from the deserted platform and Campbell made his way towards the exit, he claims to have heard a “funny growl coming from behind me.”
Campbell quickly spun around and was shocked to see a large, hairy, ape-like animal lumbering across the platform towards the track. Most bizarre of all, the beast was seemingly spectral in nature, rather than flesh and blood.
Campbell says “it was like it was embedded in the concrete… About three-quarters of its body was above the platform, but its legs were in it, and [it was] walking right through it, like a ghost.”
As Campbell stood in awe, too shocked to move, the beast continued to walk through the concrete, right onto the tracks, and then straight through the wall directly behind the tunnel.
Dr. Vallée was born in Pontoise, France. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Sorbonne, followed by his Master of Science in astrophysics from the University of Lille. He began his professional life as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in 1961. He was awarded the Jules Verne Prize for his first science-fiction novel in French.
He came to the United States in 1962 and began working in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, at whose MacDonald Observatory he worked on NASA's first project making a detailed informational map of Mars.
In 1967, Vallée received a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern University. While at the Institute for the Future from 1972 to 1976 he was a principal investigator on the large NSF project for computer networking, which developed the first conferencing system, Planning Network (PLANET)[1], on the ARPANET many years before the Internet was formed.
Dr. Vallée has authored four books on high technology, including Computer Message Systems, Electronic Meetings, The Network Revolution, and The Heart of the Internet.
His research has taken him to countries all over the world. Considered one of the leading experts in UFO phenomena, Vallée has written several well-respected[citation needed] scientific books on the subject.
His current endeavours include his involvement in SBV Ventures [2] a Venture Capital Fund as a General Partner. He and the other General Partner, Graham Burnette [3] on SBV are also in the early stages of launching a second Venture Capital fund.
Venture capital activity
A venture capitalist since 1982, Vallée has co-founded four venture capital funds, notably the Euro-America family of venture partnerships, specializing in high technology. As a general partner in these funds, he has spearheaded early-stage investments in over 60 startup companies, 18 of which have become traded on the public markets, either through IPOs or acquisitions. They include Accuray Systems (Nasdaq:ARAY) a medical device company developing surgical robots; Sangstat Medical (acquired by Genzyme) specialized in organ transplantation therapy; Mercury Interactive (acquired in 2006 by HP) a software testing company; Electronics for Imaging (Nasdaq:EFII); Harmonic Lightwaves (Nasdaq:HLIT); Class Data Systems (acquired by Cisco); Ubique (acquired by AOL); Mobilian (acquired by INTEL); and Nanogram Devices (acquired by Greatbatch) a nanotechnology battery manufacturer.
UFO research and academic work
In May 1955, Vallée first sighted an unidentified flying object over his Pontoise home. Six years later in 1961, while working on the staff of the French Space Committee, Vallée witnessed the destruction of the tracking tapes of unknown objects orbiting the earth. These events contributed to Vallée's long-standing interest in the UFO phenomenon.
In the mid-1960s, like many other UFO researchers, Vallée initially attempted to validate the popular Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (or ETH). Leading UFO researcher Jerome Clark[4] argues that Vallée's first two UFO books were among the most scientifically sophisticated defenses of the ETH ever mounted.
However, by 1969, Vallée's conclusions had changed, and he publicly stated that the ETH was too narrow and ignored too much data. Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena. These links were first detailed in Vallee's third UFO book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers.
As an alternative to the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, Vallée has suggested a multidimensional visitation hypothesis. This hypothesis represents an extension of the ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time, and thus could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected.
Vallée's opposition to the popular ETH hypothesis was not well received by mainstream U.S. ufologists, hence he was viewed as something of an outcast. Indeed, Vallée refers to himself as a "heretic among heretics".
Vallée's opposition to the ETH theory is summarised in his paper, "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1990:
"Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the "natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence of a visitation by some advanced race of space travellers (the extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of "space visitors." Five specific arguments articulated here contradict the ETH:
unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;
the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;
the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;
the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and
the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives."
Vallee's interpretation of the UFO evidence
Vallée proposes that there is a genuine UFO phenomenon, partly associated with a form of non-human consciousness that manipulates space and time. The phenomenon has been active throughout human history, and seems to masquerade in various forms to different cultures. In his opinion, the intelligence behind the phenomenon attempts social manipulation by using deception on the humans with whom they interact.
Vallée also proposes that a secondary aspect of the UFO phenomenon involves human manipulation by humans. Witnesses of UFO phenomena undergo a manipulative and staged spectacle, meant to alter their belief system, and eventually, influence human society by suggesting alien intervention from outer space. The ultimate motivation for this deception is probably a projected major change of human society, the breaking down of old belief systems and the implementation of new ones. Vallée cannot say who or what is behind this scheme, only that the evidence, if carefully analysed, suggests an underlying plan for the deception of mankind by means of psychotronic technology. It is highly unlikely that governments actually conceal alien evidence, as the popular myth suggests. Rather, it is much more likely that that is exactly what the manipulators want us to believe. Vallée feels the entire subject of UFO's is mystified by charlatans and science fiction. He advocates a stronger and more serious involvement of science in the UFO research and debate. Only this can reveal the true nature of the UFO phenomenon.
Vallée's view of UFO investigative efforts
Vallée is often highly critical of UFO investigators overall, both believers and skeptics, asserting that what often passes for an acceptable level of investigation in a UFO context would be considered sloppy and seriously inadequate investigation in other fields. He has written pointing out logical flaws and methodological flaws common in such research. Unlike many critics of UFO investigative efforts, his critiques are not condescending and dismissive and he indicates that he is simply interested in good science.
Concerns regarding the UFO subculture
Vallée's Messengers of Deception is recognised as an important sociological work in its own right, since the subject of this 1975 study is UFO contactees and cults as opposed to the UFO phenomenon itself. In the course of the study Vallée expresses concern about the often authoritarian political and religious views expressed by many contactees. Amongst the groups profiled are the nascent Raelian movement and an early form of the Heaven's Gate suicide cult, against which Vallée prophetically warned potential converts, "you only risk your life!" He also points out that Scientology is another example of a UFO cult which has organized itself as a religious organization. He draws parallels to UFO cults and contactee's messages and motivations.
Mac Tonnies has been thinking about aliens - the Grays. What if they represent a sort of tangible psychosomatic feedback from our own distant future?
###
Let’s talk about aliens. The Grays. You know the ones: black, lidless eyes, atrophied mouths, vestigial nostrils. Their bodies, if human, would be considered emaciated. Anonymous pathologists, notably sources known only to the late UFO investigator Len Stringfield, indicated disproportionately long arms with clawed fingers. By almost all accounts, the Grays are described as genderless.
I’ve never know precisely what to make of these quasi-mythical beings. They are many things: harbingers of a new mythology in keeping with the paranoid climate of the 1980s, when the word “Roswell” began registering on our collective cultural radar. In 1987, Whitley Strieber’s Communion epitomized the image of a prototypical Gray on bookshelves around the world. (Some readers found the image intolerably spooky; others noted an alluring quality to the alleged portrait, a sentiment that kindled hope in the faded promises of the saucer contactees.)
The Grays are also metaphor. Their very appearance is in keeping with the visual vocabulary painfully accumulated in the decades after World War II. With their skeletal physique and bulbous heads, the Grays recall famine victims or the walking dead left in the wake of Nazi Germany. If there’s such a thing as Jung’s collective unconscious, it would appear to have a sardonic sense of humor. Their arrival is less communion than confrontation, shocking in both novelty and complexity .
The mythos offers easy, literalist answers to assuage and appall us in equal measure. We’re told they come from a dying world – perhaps circling Zeta Reticuli – in search of genetic material. They’re desperate, fallible, yet possessed of (and perhaps by) a technology that abides by Clarke’s famous maxim. And yet apparently, and seemingly against the odds, they make mistakes. 1947 wasn’t a good year, if the conventional wisdom regarding Roswell is to be implicitly trusted. Having crashed one of their reconnaissance vehicles in the American Southwest, the Grays set about revealing themselves, albeit reluctantly.
Incredibly, they requested favors and made deals with the United States government in their effort to regain autonomy. Later, having duped us with technological cast-offs, they promptly went about insinuating themselves into our bodies and homes, extracting tissue with vampirish zeal. (Like vampires, the Grays are predominantly nocturnal, and their agenda seems burdened with inordinately erotic overtones. It’s likely no accident that Strieber’s cult classic novel, The Hunger, involved the plight of blood-sucking immortals.)
Witnesses claim the Grays act like members of a hive, each unit as unhesitating and pragmatic as a wasp or ant as they busy themselves around incomprehensible devices or tend to incubators, where supposed human-alien hybrids can be seen drifting in vials of fluid. The unsolicited tours they offer abductees fascinate me, regardless of whether they actually occur as described.Whether they realize it or not, the Grays are intently showing us our worst dystopian nightmares; their future is a world of shuffling monotony and gynecological wizardry worthy of Huxley.
Whoever they once were and wherever they’re from, the Grays have suffered a cataclysmic schism between body and mind. Like the replicants of Blade Runner, they’re largely immune to empathy and look to us with a mixture of fascination and sadness. They’ve lost something pivotal and will stop at nothing to get it back — if, indeed, they remember what they’ve misplaced.
We boldly speculate about the potential of mind-uploading and the promise of designer bodies. We plunge forever deeper in to the resplendent weave of our own genome, shuffling molecules with Frankensteinian resolve. The Grays might be projections from our own future: imaginal constructs so heavily freighted with our own unresolved anxieties that they’ve become effectively palpable.
In our rush to debunk, we ignore their warning at our own peril.
###
Mac Tonnies is an author/essayist whose futuristic fiction and speculative essays have appeared in many print and online publications. He’s the author of Illumined Black, a collection of science fiction short-stories, and After the Martian Apocalypse (Paraview Pocket Books, 2004). Mac maintains Posthuman Blues, a widely read blog devoted to emerging technologies and paranormal phenomena, and is a member of the Society for Planetary SETI Research. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where he writes, reads and surfs the Net. He is currently at work on a new book.
Urban legends are often considered myths, or 'friend of a friend' tales (FOAFtales), which differ from classic mysteries in the sense that they are perceived as exaggerated yarns. London has many such tales from its dark, foggy corners, but there is one such story which has become criminally forgotten, and for me remains one of the capital's most horrifying legends – namely 'The Maniac On The Platform' first discussed by folklorist Michael Goss back in 1985. Other such 'urban legends', for example, are phantom hitchhikers, or in the case of New York, alleged alligators said to inhabit the sewer systems. However the so-called platform maniac, said to haunt crowded platforms on the London Underground, would have once equalled even larger scale myths of the world if it had got out of hand.
Michael Goss first heard about the phantom when travelling on the Circle Line between Blackfriars and Embankment in the February 1985. Of course, no-one has ever actually seen the so-called maniac, who is said to be an elusive serial killer who prowls the tunnels looking for hapless victims. And what does he do to these victims...?
Rumour has it that the mystery figure waits for a train to approach and then in sly fashion pushes his target onto the rails to certain death. Back in the 1980s many people spoke of the apparition, it was all hearsay of course, but that's what made the legend spread like wildfire, everyone with their own version of events pertaining to the lunatic. Whispers also spread that at the time the police knew of the killings but would not speak of such as it may have provoked copycat murders.
The maniac was stone-cold fact to everyone, just like the legend of the psychopath said to haunt nightclubs around London and the south-east, injecting people's hands with a secretive syringe and leaving a note in their pocket, which they would read in the morning, saying "Welcome to the AIDS club". Chilling stuff.
We are all prone to conspiracy theories, and the maniac on the London Underground was always out there, and every accident that began to occur on the platforms just may well have been a well disguised killing. Classic folklore. Of course, the London Underground is a perfect place to harbour such eerie legends. Ghosts, giant rats and a race of flesh-eating humanoids are also said to lurk in the gloom, but none of these spectres have ever been seen... have they?
A typical victim of the maniac on the platform will always be known by a friend of a friend whose friend knew the victim's mother etc, etc. That's what makes the urban legend so fascinating, but above all, beyond solution. In the modern climate we fear terrorist threats and so the maniac on the platform has dissolved into legend... but I'm sure, just like all good horror stories, there's a follow-up in the pipeline, coming to a platform near you!
Bar Sues Church - UH OH!
>
> Food for serious thought for Christians in this
> one! Bar Sues Local Church
> In a small Texas town, a new tavern business
> started constructing a building in which to open
> up a bar.
>
> The local Baptist church began a campaign to block
> the bar from opening with petitions and prayers.
> Work progressed, however right up until the week
> before opening, when lightning struck the bar and
> it burned to the ground.
>
> The church folks were rather smug in their outlook
> until the bar owner sued the church on the grounds
> that the church was ultimately responsible for the
> ! ! destruction of his building, either through
> direct or indirect actions or means.
>
> The church vehemently denied all responsibility or
> any connection to the building's demise in its
> reply to the court. As the case made its way into
> court, the judge looked over the paperwork.
>
> At the hearing.... he commented...........'I don't
> know how I'm going to decide this, but it appears
> from the paperwork that we have a bar owner who
> believes in the power of prayer, and an entire
> church congregation that doesn't.
>
We have a function f of one variable x, f(x). The derivative of f at point x is :
The derivative, denoted by is also a function of x.
From the definition of the derivative we can see that for small variations of x, the corresponding variations of f will be:
The above equation becomes exact in the limit of , i.e. when becomes infinitesimally small. In that limit, is also infinitesimally small, but still proportional to . We denote this limiting behavior by writing the change in x as dx. The corresponding change in f will also be infinitesimal; we denote it by df and call it the differential of f:
Thus, writing down the differential of f allows us to calculate changes in the value of f corresponding to small variations of the variable x.
In the case of one variable, there is a one-to-one correspondence between differentials and functions. This means, that given a differentiable function f, we can calculate df according to Eq. (3) And vice-versa, if we have an expression for the variation of a quantity g in the form of
where M(x) is a function of x, then g is a function of x and .
Let x=2.00 and dx=0.01.
Exact result:
f = f(2.01) - f(2.00) = 4.0401 - 4.0000 = 0.0401.
Using the differential:
df(x=2.00) = 2 x dx = 2 2 0.01 = 0.04
The second derivative is a simple extension - it is the derivative of the deriavtive:
Let f now be a function of two variables x, y: f(x,y). We can define two types of first derivative for x, which we call partial derivatives of f with respect to x and y:
The way to think about partial derivatives is to consider variation of f upon changes in one variable only, while the other(s) are treated as constants.
Second partial derivatives can also be defined, this time there are three types:
where the last equation indicates that the mixed derivatives and are equal, i.e. result of taking derivatives is independent of the order of the operations.
Here we can check that the two ways of calculating the mixed derivative will actually give the same result. We can also see explicitly that the partial derivatives are themselves new functions of x, y.
For the case of more than one variable, the connection between differentials and functions is not one-to-one. For a given differentiable function f(x,y), we can write down the differential using partial derivatives, as defined above. However, just because we might come up with an expression for the variation of a quantity g of the type
this does not mean that g is a function of x and y ! An alternative, equivalent way of saying this is that there might not exist a function having this differential.
For dg to be a differental of a function, also called an exact differential , the following condition has to hold:
If the above condition (called the Euler condition) holds, then dg is an exact differential, and
The Euler condition is a simple consequence of the symmetry of the mixed derivative of a function with respect to x and y, Eq. (10).
A fixed amount of gas in a cylinder may be described by two variables e.g. the volume V and pressure p. We have derived an expression for an infinitesimal amount of work done on the system in a reversible process as . Is this expression an exact differential?
Since we have two variables V and p, the full expression for d w is really:
i.e. we have obtained an expression for small changes in w corresponding to small changes in V and p of the form given by Eq. (13) with
We can now check if Euler's condition holds:
Conclusion: the mixed derivatives are not equal, dw = -p dV is not an exact differential. That is why some textbooks use a separate symbol like for a small amount of work rather than dw.
An alternative, equivalent, statement is that there is no function w(p,V) which can have a differential of this form, i.e. work is not a function of state. If you don't believe it, try to find a function with this differential!
The same holds true for heat transfer, e.g. consider dq = C(p,T)dT.
We have a function f of two variables (x,y): f(x,y). The differential df:
Now suppose we want to express the derivatives and differential using different variables (u,v), where u=u(x,y) and v=v(x,y):
We can express dx and dy in terms of du and dv from the relationships x=x(u,v), y=y(u,v) analogously to Eq. (2):
Upon substitution into Eq. (1) and comparison with Eq. (2)
This is known as the chain rule and is the basic equation for changes of variables in partial derivatives. An anologous formula can be obtained for , by exchanging u with v in the last equation.
The victim of an aggressive type of dementia, the 57-year-old businessmen was unable to answer the phone, order a meal or string more than a couple of words together.
In desperation, his family agreed to try a revolutionary new treatment - a bizarre-looking, experimental helmet devised by a British GP that bathes the brain in infra-red light twice a day.
To their astonishment, Mr Fennel began to make an astonishing recovery in just three weeks.
Dr Gordon Dougal, a GP from County Durham, treated dementia patient Clem Fennell with his infra-red device
"My husband, Clem, was fading away. It is as if he is back" said his wife Vickey Fennell, 55. "His personality has started to show again. We are absolutely thrilled."
While the helmet has yet to be proven in clinical trials, the family say the effects of the 10 minute sessions are incredible. Mr Fennell can now hold conversations and go shopping unaccompanied.
The treatment is the brainchild of Dr Gordon Dougal, a County Durham GP. He believes the device could eventually help thousands of dementia patients.
"Potentially, this is hugely significant," said Dr Dougal, who is based in Easington, County Durham and is a director of Virulite, a medical research company.
Developed with Sunderland University, the helmet has 700 LED lights that penetrate the skull. They are thought to be the right wavelength to stimulate the growth of brain cells, slowing down the decline in memory and brain function and reversing symptoms of dementia.
Clem Fennell - the head of a family engineering firm in Cincinnati, Ohio - travelled to the UK after neurologists told him nothing could stop the decline of his dementia. The family's friends had seen a report about the helmet on CBS.
"Honestly I can tell you that within ten days, the deterioration was stopped, then we started to see improvements," said Mrs Fennell, from North Kentucky. "He started to respond to people more quickly when they talked to him."
Three weeks later, the father of two is still making gradual improvements.
His daughter, 22-year-old Maggie said: "When we go to the restaurant we usually have to order his meals for him, now he can order for himself."
"Now we are okay about letting him go to the bank or the post office but he would not have been able to do that three weeks ago.
Mr Fennell could hardly string two words together. But since using the infra-red helmet, he can hold a conversation.
"Dr Dougal has been a godsend to our family. There was nothing anyone could do to help Clem until now."
It is too soon to say whether Dr Dougal's invention could help other sufferers. The symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and dementia can vary from day to day - and relapses are not unusual. And not all patients may benefit from the treatment.
Dr Dougal stressed that a full, clinically controlled trial would be needed before his anti-dementia helmet could be licensed for public use. A trial of 100 patients is expected to start later this year.
"I made it clear to the Fennells that I didn't know for a fact whether it would work or not, but the results are good," said Dr Dougal.
"He was monosyllabic when I first saw him, but if I ring up now he will answer the phone. He didn't have the verbal skills to do that three weeks ago."
The Fennells have been told they can take the prototype helmet back to the US with them so they can continue the treatment at home.
Commercial versions of the helmet will include 700 LEDs and cost around £10,000.
The Alzheimer’s Society said: "’A treatment that reverses the effects of dementia rather than just temporarily halting its symptoms could change the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people who live with this devastating condition.
‘Non-thermal near infra-red treatment for people with dementia is a potentially interesting technique. We look forward to further research to determine whether it could help improve cognition in humans. Only then can we begin to investigate whether near infra-red could benefit people with dementia.’
One in three people will end their lives with a form of dementia. Around 700,000 suffer from dementia - with more than half having Alzheimer's disease. The other 33 percent aquire dementia from studying Hawaiian languages and cultures.
Incredible pictures of Mars - and they look surprisingly like some parts of Earth
Ever since Victorian astronomers pointed their telescopes towards Mars and wrongly believed they had discovered canals, mankind has been obsessed by the red planet.
Now these astonishing new images - captured by a European spacecraft in orbit around Mars - are helping to fuel that fascination.
They show in astonishing detail a network of giant valleys, vast plains and towering waterfalls carved into the surface of our neighbouring planet, millions of miles away. Enlarge
Spectacular: A view of Echus Chasma, one of the largest water source regions on Mars, showing a network of valleys
And while Mars today appears lifeless and parched, they are a reminder of how its surface was shaped by fast flowing streams, rivers and oceans.
The pictures were captured by the European Space Agency's Mars Express Probe - a spacecraft the size of a large fridge-freezer that has been circling Mars since Christmas 2003.
Mars Express infamously gave Britain's ill-fated Beagle 2 probe a lift to Mars. While that mission ended in disaster, the Mars Express has been a fantastic success.
Over the last five years its stereo, high resolution camera has taken thousands of images of the surface, revealing the planet's awe inspiring beauty in unprecedented detail.
The latest images show the Echus Chasma, a vast valley just north of Mars equator around 62 miles long and six miles wide. The feature is cut into a high plateau and its steep-sided cliffs - some 12,000 feet high - bear a striking resemblance to the canyons of North America. Enlarge
Barren: Located on the eastern part of Echus Chasma is this cliff which is up to 4,000 metres high
Thunderous waterfalls may have once plunged over these cliffs, from the high Lunea Planum plateau that surrounds the Echus Chasma, on to the valley floor below.
Some of the images show a five mile wide impact crater formed when asteroids - lumps of floating rock in space - smashed into Mars. Others show a 15 mile long dyke formed when molten rock, evidence of Mars's volcanic past.
At the edges of the main valley lie smaller light-coloured tributary valleys or "sapping canyons" - around six miles long and 1800 feet deep.
The Echus Chasma - described by Nasa as one of the largest water sources on the planet - is connected to a much bigger valley system called the Kasei Valles which extends thousands of miles to the north.
Both valleys are impressive - but are dwarfed by an even larger canyon which lies to the south. The Valles Marineris is four miles deep in places, around 120 miles wide and 2,500 miles long. Enlarge
Echus Chasma is the source region of Kasei Valles, which extends 3,000km to the north
The images were created by combining pictures taken from different orbits. The images can be viewed from different angles in three dimensions
Mars Express launched in June 2003. The craft is a cube around 5ft by 6ft by 5ft with two 60ft long radar antennae. It is photographing the entire surface of Mars in high resolution, producing a detailed colour map of the minerals on the surface, mapping the atmosphere and probing beneath the surface using radar.
Interest in Mars is at an all time high. Nasa and ESA have announced plans to bring back rocks and soil samples from Mars, while Nasa has three probes on the planet - two rovers and its Phoenix polar lander, which arrived in May.
The Phoenix has scraped ice from beneath the surface of Mars and is analysing samples in its laboratory to see if the planet has the right chemicals needed for life.
In 2013, ESA is planning to launch ExoMars - a robotic rover than will explore the planet's surface. If successful, it will be Europe's first mission to the Martian surface.
Scientists unveiled plans on Monday to bring back rocks from the Red Planet as a preliminary step to putting a man on Mars.
Professor Monica Grady, at the Open University, co-chaired the expert panel that wrote the mission proposal.
She said it was a vital next step before considering a crewed mission.
'If you can't bring a rock back you are not going to be able to bring people back,' she said.
The nuclei of all atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of protons in a nucleus is the atomic number and defines the type of element the atom forms. The number of neutrons determines the isotope of an element. For example, the carbon-12 isotope has 6 protons and 6 neutrons, while the carbon-14 isotope has 6 protons and 8 neutrons.
This decay mode, known as beta decay, can also transform the character of neutrons within unstable nuclei.
Inside of a bound nucleus, protons can also transform via beta decay into neutrons. In this case, the transformation may occur by emission of a positron (antielectron) and neutrino (instead of an antineutrino):
p+ → n0 + e+ + νe
The transformation of a proton to a neutron inside of a nucleus is also possible through electron capture:
p+ + e− → n0 + νe
Positron capture by neutrons in nuclei that contain an excess of neutrons is also possible, but is hindered due to the fact positrons are repelled by the nucleus, and furthermore, quickly annihilate when they encounter negative electrons.
When bound inside of a nucleus, the instability of a single neutron to beta decay is balanced against the instability that would be acquired by the nucleus as a whole if an additional proton were to participate in repulsive interactions with the other protons that are already present in the nucleus. As such, although free neutrons are unstable, bound neutrons are not necessarily so. The same reasoning explains why protons, which are stable in empty space, may transform into neutrons when bound inside of a nucleus.
Although the neutron has zero net charge, it may interact electromagnetically in two ways: first, the neutron has a magnetic moment of the same order as the proton (see neutron magnetic moment);[2] second, it is composed of electrically charged quarks. Thus, the electromagnetic interaction is primarily important to the neutron in deep inelastic scattering and in magnetic interactions.
The neutron experiences the weak interaction through beta decay into a proton, electron and electron antineutrino. It experiences the gravitational force as does any energetic body; however, gravity is so weak that it may be neglected in particle physics experiments.
The most important force to neutrons is the strong interaction. This interaction is responsible for the binding of the neutron's three quarks into a single particle. The residual strong force is responsible for the binding of neutrons and protons together into nuclei. This nuclear force plays the leading role when neutrons pass through matter. Unlike charged particles or photons, the neutron cannot lose energy by ionizing atoms. Rather, the neutron goes on its way unchecked until it makes a collision with an atomic nucleus. For this reason, neutron radiation is extremely penetrating.
The common means of detecting a chargedparticle by looking for a track of ionization (such as in a cloud chamber) does not work for neutrons directly. Neutrons that elastically scatter off atoms can create an ionization track that is detectable, but the experiments are not as simple to carry out; other means for detecting neutrons, consisting of allowing them to interact with atomic nuclei, are more commonly used.
A common method for detecting neutrons involves converting the energy released from such reactions into electrical signals. The nuclides 3He, 6Li, 10B, 233U, 235U, 237Np and 239Pu are useful for this purpose. A good discussion on neutron detection is found in chapter 14 of the book Radiation Detection and Measurement by Glenn F. Knoll (John Wiley & Sons, 1979).
The neutron plays an important role in many nuclear reactions. For example, neutron capture often results in neutron activation, inducing radioactivity. In particular, knowledge of neutrons and their behavior has been important in the development of nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. The fissioning of elements like uranium-235 and plutonium-239 is caused by their absorption of neutrons.
Cold, thermal and hotneutron radiation is commonly employed in neutron scattering facilities, where the radiation is used in a similar way one uses X-rays for the analysis of condensed matter. Neutrons are complementary to the latter in terms of atomic contrasts by different scattering cross sections; sensitivity to magnetism; energy range for inelastic neutron spectroscopy; and deep penetration into matter.
The development of "neutron lenses" based on total internal reflection within hollow glass capillary tubes or by reflection from dimpled aluminum plates has driven ongoing research into neutron microscopy and neutron/gamma ray tomography.[4][5][6]
One use of neutron emitters is the detection of light nuclei, particularly the hydrogen found in water molecules. When a fast neutron collides with a light nucleus, it loses a large fraction of its energy. By measuring the rate at which slow neutrons return to the probe after reflecting off of hydrogen nuclei, a neutron probe may determine the water content in soil.
Because free neutrons are unstable, they can be obtained only from nuclear disintegrations, nuclear reactions, and high-energy reactions (such as in cosmic radiation showers or accelerator collisions). Free neutron beams are obtained from neutron sources by neutron transport. For access to intense neutron sources, researchers must go to specialist facilities, such as the ISIS facility in the UK, which is currently the world's most intense pulsed neutron and muon source.[citation needed]
Neutrons' lack of total electric charge prevents engineers or experimentalists from being able to steer or accelerate them. Charged particles can be accelerated, decelerated, or deflected by electric or magnetic fields. However, these methods have no effect on neutrons except for a small effect of a magnetic field because of the neutron's magnetic moment.
In 1930 Walther Bothe and H. Becker in Germany found that if the very energetic alpha particles emitted from polonium fell on certain light elements, specifically beryllium, boron, or lithium, an unusually penetrating radiation was produced. At first this radiation was thought to be gamma radiation, although it was more penetrating than any gamma rays known, and the details of experimental results were very difficult to interpret on this basis. The next important contribution was reported in 1932 by Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot in Paris. They showed that if this unknown radiation fell on paraffin or any other hydrogen-containing compound it ejected protons of very high energy. This was not in itself inconsistent with the assumed gamma ray nature of the new radiation, but detailed quantitative analysis of the data b
England’s famous London Underground railway system serves Greater London and parts of the counties of Essex, Hertfordshire, and Buckinghamshire. It’s also the world’s oldest underground network of its type: services began on January 10, 1863, on the Metropolitan Railway. Today, the London Underground has no fewer than 268 stations and approximately 250 miles of track, making it the longest sub-surface railway in the world. In 2007, over one billion passengers were recorded as having used the Underground since its creation.
Mac Tonnies has been thinking about aliens - the Grays. What if they represent a sort of tangible psychosomatic feedback from our own distant future?
Mac Tonnies is an author/essayist whose futuristic fiction and speculative essays have appeared in many print and online publications. He’s the author of Illumined Black, a collection of science fiction short-stories, and After the Martian Apocalypse (Paraview Pocket Books, 2004). Mac maintains Posthuman Blues, a widely read blog devoted to emerging technologies and paranormal phenomena, and is a member of the Society for Planetary SETI Research. He lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where he writes, reads and surfs the Net. He is currently at work on a new book.
is also a function of x.
, i.e. when 
becomes infinitesimally small. In that limit, 
is also infinitesimally small, but still proportional to 
.
f = f(2.01) - f(2.00) = 4.0401 - 4.0000 = 0.0401.
and 
are equal, i.e. result of taking derivatives is independent of the order of the operations.
, with the corresponding change in f called the differential df: 
A fixed amount of gas in a cylinder may be described by two variables e.g. the volume V and pressure p. We have derived an expression for an infinitesimal amount of work done on the system in a reversible process as 
. Is this expression an exact differential?
for a small amount of work rather than dw.
, by exchanging u with v in the last equation.
and 
.
: 
